Thursday, December 10, 2015

Person of the year

Time chose Angela Merkel. The award allegedly identifies the person who has the most effect on the year's news, not necessarily the most benevolent one, so being the destroyer of Germania does not mandate disqualification.

There were seven other finalists, including Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, Black Lives Matter activists, Donald Trump, Caitlyn Jenner, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Bernie Sanders won the online readers' poll (which tells more about the readership of Time than it does about the salience of Sanders).

The following bar graph compares relative search interest for Merkel and the other eight listed above from January 1, 2015 through December 10, 2015. The higher the number, the greater the number of searches for the person or group worldwide. Google Trends generates the figures. It's not clear to me exactly what these numbers represent beyond relative search volumes:

1 comment:

Oh the global stage is like an off Broadway play now. The Lamebrain media is losing eyeballs like a sonnavabitch. Time may be bought for $1 by a Billionaire who doesn't mind losing money like Newsweek was already. Carlos Slim bought the Dead Grey lady that ain't what she used to be too. The dinosaurs are all going extinct. They say Cable is dead. I don't watch TV, but they have gone Full Retard 24/7 Gay Cuckold City from what I hear. The new Star Wars has a main black character, which means no overseas money at all. The Long Nightmare is Almost Over.